Simply two months after the third-person action-horror recreation Stray Souls got here out, developer Jukai Studio abruptly shuttered its doorways, citing myriad points together with poor recreation gross sales and a number of cyberattacks from an unknown perpetrator.The developer took to X/Twitter on December 22 to announce the sudden closure. A part of the issue, Jukai Studio mentioned, was Stray Souls’ abysmal reception and gross sales, which made the group “fully unable to maintain the corporate.”
Stray Souls, the studio’s debut challenge a couple of man uncovering the secrets and techniques of a haunted city, launched on October 25 to scathing critiques on Metacritic and OpenCritic. Regardless of simply two core of us and a number of other contracted people engaged on the sport, in response to Jukai Studio, issues have been finally too untenable to proceed as is, significantly due to incessant cyberattacks.
“We did all the pieces in our energy to convey [Stray Souls] to completion in the absolute best kind, however all through all the length, we, our writer workers, different writer [developer] groups and our shut ones have been always attacked by a cyber persecutor, and a few of you, as our group, have been additionally tormented with undesirable messages and emails,” Jukai Studio mentioned in a press release. “We perceive that you simply didn’t want to proceed actively supporting us for the apparent causes talked about above. The matter is now within the arms of our attorneys, so we can’t talk about it any additional, however know that we’ll not abandon it regardless of the studio’s closure.”
Jukai Studio’s closure got here the identical day as its writer Versus Evil, the corporate behind glorious tactical RPG franchise The Banner Saga, which additionally shut down on December 22, simply three months after its 10-year anniversary. Consequently, everybody who labored at Versus Evil was laid off, in response to GamesIndustry.biz. Apparently, regardless of Jukai Studio closing its doorways, nobody has technically been laid off as a result of, because the group mentioned, the developer “by no means functioned as a big company.”
Kotaku reached out to Jukai Studio and Versus Evil for remark.
Each Jukai Studio and Versus Evil just lately thanked everybody who supported them over time. “We hope that 2024 shall be a 12 months of optimistic adjustments on the planet of recreation improvement,” Jukai Studio mentioned. I hope so, too, particularly as a number of particular person builders have been fired final 12 months and an bevy of studios closed up. It was really a devastatingly tumultuous 12 months for the video games business.